Coudert Institute Round Table on Architecture

Paul Goldberger, Vladimir Kagan, Anne Fairfax, Richard Sammons and John Loring as Moderator. Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic of The New Yorker, will discuss his two new books: "Why Architecture Matters" and "Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture," a collection of his architecture pieces from The New Yorker. He will talk about the role architecture plays in everyone's life and where he expects architecture to be as we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century... Vladimir Kagan will be discussing extreme design and the question "Is it art or is it design?" He will explain the design process of his own work and how it relates to and is inspired by architecture. Fairfax and Sammons’ practise in classical architecture is in defiance of a cultural environment whereby generally anything new and never before seen and therefore 'original' is heralded, and design, which is authentically-based on the accumulated wisdom of 2,000 years of developed refinement of tectonic abstraction and expression, is labeled kitsch. Their design decisions are rooted in the knowledge and use of proportion and scale and historic precedent. It is also through also a common sense approach to sustainable building practices such as use of regional building products, siting for natural daylight and potential passive heating and cooling and other traditional methodology that we are able to achieve designs of enduring quality.

Dinner and Introductions at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 4 at Villa Dei Fiori. Lunch at 12 p.m. Friday, March 5 at the Sailfish Club and round table program to follow. Coudert Institute Website